Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/6

priate to the present Crisis of unexampled Distress; a Sermon,' Manchester, 1826. 10. 'Discourses suited to these Eventful and Critical Times,' London, 1832 (preached at the Episcopal Chapel, Broad Court, Drury Lane, London, of which Burton is said, on the title-page, to be minister). 11. 'A Discourse on Protestantism, delivered on the occasion of admitting two Roman Catholics to the Protestant Communion' (? Manchester, 1840). 12. 'The Church and Dissent: an appeal to Independents, Presbyterians, Methodists, and other Sects, &c.,' Manchester, 1840. 13. 'The Watchman's Cry, or Protestant England roused from her Slumber; a Discourse,' Manchester, 1840. 14. 'Lectures on the Millennium,' London, 1841. The millennium is to begin in 1868. 15. 'Lectures on the World before the Flood,' London (Manchester), 1844. An attempt to harmonise the literal narrative of Genesis with the discoveries of science. 16. 'Lectures on the Deluge and the World after the Flood,' London (Manchester), 1845. 17. 'Lectures on Popery,' Manchester, 1851. 18. 'A Demonstration of Catholic Truth by a plain and final Argument against the Socinian Heresy, a discourse,' Manchester, 1853. 19. 'The Comet,' 'The World on Fire,' The World after the Fire,' 'The New Heaven and the New Earth,' are titles of single sermons issued in 1858. 20. 'The Antiquity of the British Church, a lecture,' Manchester, 1861. This is a pamphlet on the Liberation Society controversy.

In addition to his theological studies Burton had a great fondness for botanical pursuits, and his discovery in Anglesea of a plant new to science led to his election as fellow of the Linnean Society. While on a visit at Western Lodge, Durham, he was attacked by typhus fever of a virulent nature, and died after three weeks' illness on 6 Sept. 1866.

BURTON, CHARLES EDWARD (1846–1882), astronomer, was born on 16 Sept. 1846, at Barnton, Cheshire, of which benefice his father, the Rev. Edward W. Burton, was then incumbent. He showed from childhood a marked taste for astronomy, and entered Lord Rosse's observatory as assistant in February 1868, some months before taking a degree of B. A. at the university of Dublin. Compelled by constitutional delicacy to resign the post in March 1869, he joined the Sicilian expedition to observe the total solar eclipse of 22 Dec. 1870, and read a paper on its results before the Royal Irish Academy, 13 Feb. 1871 (Proc. new ser. i. 113). The observations and drawings made by him at Agosta (Sicily) were included in Mr. Ranyard's valuable 'eclipse volume' (Mem. R. A. Soc. xli.) Attached as photographer to the transit of Venus expedition in 1874, he profited by his stay at Rodriguez to observe southern nebulae (30 Doradus and that surrounding η Argus) with a 12-inch silvered glass reflector of his own construction (Month. Not. xxxvi. 69). On his return he spent nearly twelve months at Greenwich measuring photographs of the transit, then worked for two years at the observatory of Dunsink, near Dublin, and retired in August 1878, once more through ill-health, to his father's parsonage at Loughlinstown, county Dublin, where he made diligent use of his own admirable specula. His observations on Mars, during the opposition of 1879, were of especial value as confirming the existence, and adding to the numbers, of the 'canals' discovered by Schiaparelli two years previously. A communication to the Royal Dublin Society descriptive of them was printed in their 'Scientific Transactions' under the title of 'Physical Observations of Mars, 1879-80' (i. 151, ser. ii.) From twenty-four accompanying drawings (two of them executed by Dr. Dreyer with the Dunsink refractor) a chart on Mercator's projection was constructed, which Mr. Webb adopted in the fourth edition of his 'Celestial Objects' (1881). Burton's experiments on lunar photography were interrupted by preparations for the second transit of Venus. But within a few weeks of starting for his assigned post at Aberdeen Road, Cape Colony, he died suddenly of heart-disease in Castle Knock church, on Sunday, 9 July 1882, aged 35.

The loss to science by the premature close of his useful and blameless life was considerable. He was equally keen in observing, and skilful in improving the means of observing. With Mr. Howard Grubb he devised the 'ghost micrometer,' described before the Royal Dublin Society, 15 Nov. 1880 (Proc. iii. 1; Month. Not. xli. 59), and alluded to hopefully by Dr. Gill in his treatise on micrometers (Encycl. Brit., 9th ed, xvi. 256). Among his communications to scientific periodicals may be mentioned 'Note on the Appearance presented by the fourth Satellite of Jupiter in Transit in the years 1871-3' (Month. Not. xxxiii. 472), in which he concluded, independently of Engelmann, an identity in times of rotation and revolution; ' On the Present Dimensions of the White Spot Linné' (ib. xxxiv. 107); 'On Certain Pheno-